Of Milk and Cookies

The child grew up as most children do believing in Santa Claus.  There were clear reasons for that.  His parents told him Santa was real and surely his parents would not lie. All his friends believed Santa was real.  How could everyone he know believe a falsehood?  And there was evidence to support his belief.  The magical appearance of gifts from Santa on Christmas morning, the half-eaten cookies, the empty milk glass.  Surely Santa was real.  And the notion of keeping a list and finding out who is naughty and who is nice is very much like what they taught him in church.  No one said otherwise.  Not his parents, his friends, his church, or even all the TV commercials and Christmas movies.  They all sent the same message:  Santa is real.  The child was a believer.

Until one day at school in about the 3^rd grade another student announced that Santa was not real.  He was thunderstruck.  Devastated.  Angry.  Hurt.  That kid became hated.  How could this be?  Could there have been a conspiracy to promote the reality of Santa for some ghastly subversive reason?  Yes, he thought.  There could be.  After all, he had never actually seen Santa place gifts under the tree, eat cookies, or drink milk. He surmised those conclusions based on what he saw as evidence.  And yet, how did Santa get to every child on earth in one night?  Why did Santa give less to poor kids than to rich kids?  If there was a North Pole toy factory why hadn’t anyone found it yet?  We found black holes and they do not even emit light.  This could be, heaven forbid, a myth, a lie, a culturally accepted falsehood. Wow.

Eventually, the boy took pride in knowing a truth that many others did not.  He accepted a new Santa-less reality and swore never to be hornswoggled again.  He would know stuff and support stuff based on facts and evidence, not widely held myths.  He was sad, but he could hold his head up.  He had taken one giant step toward being an adult.  And his life went on.

Until now.  Now there was a large division between those who believed one thing and those who knew another thing.  It upset him. There was strife, there was conflict.  His nation as he knew it was at risk and if he was going to be true to his childhood revelation and the promise he made to himself, he must seek out the truth.

So what is real?  Is it real that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by one candidate from another?  The more he looked, the more he saw this was a lie.  It was a myth.  In 61 court cases across the country, every case was thrown out because those who argued the election results were tainted could provide no proof of that claim.  No one stole the election.  The winner won by 7 million votes.  An outcome too vast to be faked or falsified.  Election officials across the country of both parties stood their ground and claimed the results in their states were the real results.  The results of a democratic election in a nation where we say of the people, by the people, for the people.  No evidence to the contrary. None!  He was amazed again.  If that simple fact was true then all else that followed looks very different.  Rather than a victim of some nationwide liberal conspiracy, the loser was just a sore loser.  Worse, he was willing to violate the constitution he swore to uphold just so he could stay in power.  Oh my.  There will be people who get mad and cry when they finally know there is no Santa. 

For the first time in our history, the loser refused to congratulate the winner.  For the first time in our history, the loser plotted to maintain control of the presidency through documented phone calls to state officials asking them to create votes on his behalf.  For the first time in history, the loser tried to get electors from states that would support overturning the election.  For the first time in our history, the loser invited those who supported him the most to show up in our nation’s capital and encouraged them to march to Congress to show support for him. It became an insurrection.  Life was lost.  Property was destroyed, not just any property, but precious American, historical property.  These supporters waved flags.  They wore costumes.  They paraded through the halls of Congress despite the efforts of the police to stop them.  The loser did nothing to stop them.  As trials began to prosecute the insurrectionists the loser did all he could to keep documents from getting to the court.  He did all he could do to block testimony.  He did all he could do to keep his inner circle from telling the truth to Congress and the courts.  And yet, the decision by juries across the country was that those who attacked the capital were insurrectionists, revolting against the rule of law and the sanctity of elections. Those who infiltrated the Capital headed for prison.

And what of the loser behind the scenes?  He continues to claim the election was stolen.  He continues to claim that immigration hurts our nation and threatens our survival which is really kind of funny since everyone here is an immigrant of one generation or another.  He continues to claim that we should support Russia when it has been shown that Russia used Facebook and the NRA to launder campaign money for the loser and spread propaganda for the loser.

It got worse.  There were a large number of American Citizens who supported the loser.  It appeared they supported the loser for several reasons.  They respected a man who would say whatever he wanted to and not worry about the consequences.  They supported a man who knew all people were not created equal despite what the Bible and our Constitution said.  They supported the notion that there was a liberal conspiracy determined to ruin our country even though the only such organizations anyone could find supported the loser.  They wanted a nation of White folks, especially White men, back in charge. They opposed rights for anyone else not realizing that once one violates the rights of anyone, everyone is at risk. 

So the boy, now a man, wondered what he should do.  Should he tell these people that what they believed was a myth?  It was made up?  It was not the truth?  Should he stand, regardless of outcome or consequence, and say, “Enough!  This is wrong!”  Or should he simply lay low and hope that time would wash away this terrible belief system threatening to undo an almost 250-year experiment that claimed all were equal, all had civil rights, that this was a nation of, by, and for the people, not a nation of the wealthy for the wealthy by the powerful.  Should he stand and point out that the USA was founded and grounded in liberal beliefs by a group of agnostics and atheists?  Could he do that?

It has been a while since I have written.  I have tossed and turned and wrestled with the future of our nation.  But I can be silent no more.  We must be a land of law. We must be a land of consequences for wrongdoing.  We must be a government of, by, and for the people.  We must be the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Santa is not real.  Trump lost the election.  All else is logical. I stand here to defend the truth, even if many must shed tears when they realize our future cannot be in the hands of extremists, right or left.  Be bold.  Be an American for truth and justice.  Let’s purge ourselves of those who would lie, cheat and steal their way into power.  And for goodness sake, stop putting out milk and cookies for adults who perpetrate political myths.